


Love In The Time Of Mercury Retrograde; Or, How Brad Learned To Stop Taking Life So Seriously And Just Enjoy It

by Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor (orphan_account)



Series: The Way We Are [2]
Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brad sucks a little at flirting. Adam sucks more. Somehow in the aftermath of their first meeting, they make it work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love In The Time Of Mercury Retrograde; Or, How Brad Learned To Stop Taking Life So Seriously And Just Enjoy It

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Juli for the beta!!

"Can I help you?"

"I'd like something tall, dark, and hot," Brad says, plunking his elbows down on the counter and offering the Starbucks girl his best smile. His work bag is thrown over his shoulder and he's in something moderately more acceptable today—jeans, at least, instead of a pair of godawful sweats—and the barista only rolls her eyes and huffs a little before hollering into the back.

"ADAM! Somebody out here for you," she yells, and then gives Brad the side-eye. He offers the shit-eating grin again. 

"Also an iced chai. Venti. With soy." He hands over his card, and that's when Adam ambles out of the back, arms full of what looks like a very heavy syrup box. Brad bites his tongue.

His parking-lot rescuer looks even better in daylight; right now he's in Starbucks uglies and his face is covered in sweat, but the full lips and tousled hair stand out even more in sunlight and—Brad bites the insides of his cheeks—there are freckles all over those kissable cheekbones. 

Also, he looks adorably awkward heaving the edge of the box up onto the counter. The barista rolls her eyes at him. Adam doesn't even look like he notices—he actually looks kind of petrified. Brad offers him a smile way more genuine than the one he threw at the barista.

"Hey," he says, and Adam shoves the box the rest of the way onto the counter.

"Hey."

Brad shuffles one foot, trying to remember not to cross one over the other and actually let them see he's fidgeting. "I just wanted to say thanks for helping me, the other night."

Adam's nod is the kind of awkward, half-unsure thing that says he's not entirely sure why Brad would feel the need to get to work early just to come say thank you. "No problem." There's an awkward pause, and then Adam soldiers ahead, like one of those kids Brad remembers from high school who were one step above losers and half a dozen below cool. "Did you, uh . . . you know, get your battery done?"

"Yeah." Brad nibbles at his lower lip. "The guy who changed it said I was lucky it didn't explode. There's a couple of other things in there that need fixed, I guess." 

"Excuse me, but I have a line here," the barista says. Brad kind of wants to tell her to serve around him, he's not that big, god, but then he sees her kind of motioning him—behind the counter? Around it?—in some kind of motion that puts less granite tabletop between him and the cute boy from the parking lot, anyway, and he steps to the side before being motioned neatly behind the little metal table they use for their espresso machine. Adam bites his lip, rubs his neck. Brad squirms a little. 

They both want to say something. He can tell. But the most Brad's done in the direction of serious flirting since he moved here was fake dirty-talk in one of the little booths along the back wall of the club, and he's at a loss. Finally he just smiles again. His stomach feels hollow. Maybe his gaydar isn't so hot, or maybe it's the baggy T-shirt he's wearing. 

"Well, mm—I—you know, I should get next door," he manages. "I have to get dressed." The smile starts feeling noticeably fake, but he can't seem to get it off his face; if it goes he thinks he might actually cry, and what the hell, it was one cup of bad coffee at a Denny's at three in the morning. He shouldn't be reacting like this. "If you've got time to kill after work we're doing a coed show tonight. The girls would love you." And then, even though he shouldn't: "You're sweet."

He slips out from behind the counter, and then there's the barest brush of fingers on his waist—light, but deliberate. He turns around and sees Adam looking down at him, both of them frozen with Adam's hand still just touching that spot on Brad's waist that feels like no way Brad's ever been touched before—not possessive or rough or platonic but just pure _electric_ , his body connected to another body that moves and breathes and thinks.

"I get off at midnight," Adam tells him. He looks stunned, like he's not entirely sure who's using his mouth. "We close at eleven but we've got to clean and prep for the morning shift." 

"And that explains why I always end up at Big Boy after work," Brad says. It sounds ludicrous, but there's some subtle shift in the corners of Adam's eyes that he finds encouraging.

"Yeah," Adam agrees. "But, uh." He ducks his head and rubs at the back of his neck again, and when he does Brad feels that touch on his waist change—Adam doesn't move, but the touch somehow becomes more deliberate, purposeful. Then he suddenly pulls away, and Brad misses the warmth of his fingertips. "Yeah. Maybe I'll see you over there."

And he grabs his box off the counter and turns away, and there's nothing else for Brad to say.

\-------------

Brad's never felt this fake before.

He's usually not thinking about his clients when he smiles—it might be a day at the beach or a particularly good screenplay idea on his mind, but the smile is always real. The makeup is just an accent, something to add a little sparkle, the hairspray and skimpy clothes just another way of getting attention. Brad decided early on that he could be ignored, he could be angry, or he could be loud and colourful, and loud and colourful won.

Tonight he doesn't feel loud and colourful. Tonight he feels heartbroken, and it's stupid, it really is, because it was one meeting and an awkward reunion and nothing more, something that was probably nothing, something he was reading too much into—

There's a twenty in his hand, and when he turns to smile probably-up at whoever's handed it to him, he ends up looking straight into Adam's face. 

"Hi," Adam calls over the heavy thump of the sound system. He's stripped out of his work uniform and thrown on a tight T-shirt and a droolworthy pair of jeans, and he looks at least slightly less petrified than he did at work. Brad tries to ignore the weird way his heart is sinking—Adam is here, isn't he?—and focus on the fact that it's _him_ Adam just handed money to, not one of the girls. 

"Hey," he greets, and wraps a hand around Adam's wrist—for reasons he's never understood, that little touch drives some of his clients totally wild. "Looking for something?"

"You."

Now Brad understands that little sinking feeling; one of the first things he noticed about Adam, before he ever knew his name, was that he talked like a human being, not a player. And he might still be doing that, his responses might just sound pat because he was shy coming over here and rehearsed them in his head, but Brad doesn't like how easily this boy turned into regular Hollywood sleazy.

"Well, I guess you found me," he teases, and clenches his other hand on the twenty hard enough to hear it crackle. "I can find a room." There are six of them in the back, and usually at least two open. Brad lets go of Adam's wrist to dart between two people and catch the edge of a curtain, welcome him in and let go of the last few delusions he was harbouring about LA and people in general.

And then he turns around to smile over his shoulder, and Adam's gone.

Brad stares back into the crowd; compared to the quiet little fey men and loud little twinks who mostly populate this place, Adam is huge. He should stick out like a sore thumb, but he just . . . isn't. There's a shadowy shape by the door to the outside that Brad catches just long enough to take a breath he can call out with, and then there's nothing.

His fingers twitch around the twenty, wondering if it's supposed to be a subtle fuck-you, maybe. He hears that weird crackle again and frowns; money, even new money, isn't supposed to crackle, in Brad's experience.

He slips into the private room and pulls the curtain—it's dim, but there's enough light to see well if he squints. He unfolds the twenty and finds a little scrap of what can only be register paper folded up into a little crackly packet, end tucked over end like the notes some of the kids cooler than Brad passed around in high school.

The paper unfolds like a flower as soon as he frees it and untucks the end, and then he's staring down at wide, looping half-cursive that kind of looks like it belongs in a college girl's biology notes.

 _I wanted to give you this earlier, but I'm not very good at this,_ the note says. Brad snorts—Adam's probably up to his eyeballs in cute little boys and girls. Then he thinks of the awkward, half-petrified way Adam tried to strike up a conversation, and reconsiders. If Adam were used to brushing off—or accepting—offers, he'd be better at it. Hard to believe, then, but true. _I'm sorry for interrupting you at work but I didn't know how else to give this to you. Your car isn't in the parking lot._

Ten digits march across the middle of the paper. The first three are an LA area code. Brad's seen enough of them to know.

Underneath is a little scribble, like he started to write "love" or "yours truly" or whatever little closer it is he normally uses, and then thought better of it, and below that, his name: _Adam L._ Brad wonders what the L stands for. Maybe, in this age of ubiquitous cell phones, Adam provided it as a courtesy for Brad's phone book.

Brad looks at the note, the numbers in a neat block print that belies the writing above and below them, and then he stuffs the note in the waistband of the ridiculous tighty-whities he stripped down to earlier tonight and pulls back the curtain, darts off toward the door into the converted storeroom the dancers pretend is a real dressing room; Brad still isn't entirely sure how the place hasn't gotten shut down yet.

Inside it's all loud noise and bright lights, an argument about a number going on in one corner and somebody rapidly stitching a torn costume in the middle of the floor, and no way Brad is going to be heard over all this racket. So instead he flips open his phone and sends a short text to the number on Adam's note, identifies himself and then, pondering, adds _now what am I supposed to make of this twenty you handed me?_

The deejay sticks his head in and hollers out Brad's stage name (as much for the clientele outside as for Brad's benefit, Brad thinks; they like to know they're getting their money's worth),, reminds him he's up in two numbers. Brad groans and strips out of the schoolboy undies before hunting through his pile of stuff for his suspenders. 

He's just into his new clothes—too horribly West Side Story, but a lot of the older guys seem to like it—when his phone lets out a shrill buzz.

_I'd like to put it toward coffee again, if that's okay with you._

Brad rolls his eyes at the phone. Then his lips quirk up, and he types out a response.

_See a lady home?_

He has to run to make his number, and when he gets back with a new handful of fives stuffed in various interesting places, he has a message waiting for him:

_Be there with bells on._

And it's so flaky, and ridiculous, and adorable, and _Adam_ in every capacity Brad's ever seen him, that he can't help it. He sits right down on the floor and laughs.

 

\-----------------------------------------

Troy is giving Brad problems.

First he didn't want to let Adam in, even with Brad's texts in his phone; now he's lecturing Brad about leaving with strange men. Finally Brad rolls his eyes and grabs his bag.

"He's only strange because he's not an asshole," he announces. "That's pretty rare around here." And he walks out the door before Troy can figure out whether or not he's been insulted, tosses his bag in the back of Adam's car like it's something he's done before and slides in. Adam puts the car in gear and smiles at him in the glow from the parking lot lights.

"Anywhere in particular you want to go?"

"Not Big Boy." 

Adam laughs, and it's loud and free and beautiful and Brad wills his heart to slow down before it pulls an Alien on him. "I know a club that has a coffee bar upstairs. I don't know how you feel about that after just getting out of one." 

"I feel that's perfect," Brad answers, and smiles and ducks his head, trying to break out of fake-flirt mode; that's usually what the after-show coffee club is about, winding down and going home. Then suddenly there's a hand on his knee, a gentle squeeze that's not trying to slink upward or inward, and when he looks up again his smile feels different, good on his face instead of fake-paint-plastered. Adam looks like he's blushing, or thinking about blushing. "Not putting in a good word for the home place, huh?"

Adam makes a face. "Burnt coffee and gross pastries. The place I'm talking about has the good stuff. Fresh." They pull up to a red light, and Adam glances at Brad sidelong, like he's afraid to look head-on. "Thanks for not writing me off."

"No," Brad protests. "Thank _you_." There's a long pause, and he brushes his hair out of his face. "I've had a couple of guys ask me out before and as soon as they know what I do for a living they run in the other direction. So, you know, usually on the first date."

"Well, that's stupid," Adam spits out. Then he makes a tongue-biting face. "I mean, it doesn't _thrill_ me, but you do what you have to do. I don't draw espresso art because I think I, you know, have something huge to bring to the field."

Brad giggles. "If you're the one responsible for the little daisies I see in the whipped cream sometimes, you totally do," he says, and now Adam does blush. 

"I got sick of hearts and smiley faces."

"Gee," Brad teases. "I can't imagine why." They pull up outside a club marginally less dingy than Brad's, and Adam actually darts around the car to open Brad's door before he can do it himself. Brad smiles up at him and—contrary to everything, every way he normally acts—lets Adam slide an arm, first tentative and then, when Brad doesn't pull away, possessive, around his waist.

They sit in silence in the quieter upper level, but it's not the awkward, screaming silence they found between them in Starbucks; instead Brad leans contentedly against Adam's side, head on his shoulder, arms around his waist while he waits for their coffee. After a couple of minutes Adam reaches up and runs his fingers through Brad's hair—slow, easy—and Brad closes his eyes in bliss.

"So where are you from, before you came here?" Adam asks, and Brad jerks, yanked back into real life.

"Wh—what?" 

"You do a pretty good job with an LA accent, but a couple of your vowels sound different," Adam tells him. Brad slaps a quizzical look on over his panic, and Adam offers up a shy grin. "I'm an actor. I'm just having trouble being the It Boy right now. And you're from . . . what, Minnesota? Somewhere up there?"

"Texas." And it's a shame, because Brad really liked this boy, but he can't date someone who knows that. Dallas is far away and long ago, as far as he's concerned, and he doesn't want to be in a relationship where who knows how many weeks or months in the boy will want to know more about his past. Brad was born when he stepped off the plane in LA; there's no need, he thinks, to return to what he left behind. Adam looks chagrined.

"Oops." Then he swoops Brad into both arms in a giant, encompassing bear hug, rests his lips on the cup of Brad's ear. "It's okay," he murmurs, and against his better judgement Brad lets his head fall back. "If you don't wanna talk about it, that's okay." 

Brad can't help himself: he whimpers and squirms farther back into those arms, into that promise, and tucks his head under Adam's like he's trying to hide. Adam strokes his back and hair and nuzzles the top of his head. Brad closes his eyes and listens to Adam's heartbeat, and realises with a sudden shock that he hasn't been really, truly hugged since he moved here: three years. He burrows farther into Adam's arms and feels them tighten around him, Adam's fingers still in his hair and free hand resting lightly on Brad's waist.

There's a small clink of china, and Brad hears Adam murmur something that's probably a thank-you before scratching at Brad's back lightly with his nails, all up and down and side to side and a final ruffle up through Brad's hair. "Our coffee's here."

Brad pulls reluctantly out of Adam's arms and sits up. He feels—liberated, weird but true, like he's had a good long cry but didn't get the clogged sinuses and dry eyes and headache to go with it. He takes his cup off their tray and sips, then stops, surprised. Adam offers him a little smile.

"It's cinnamon."

"It's good." He takes another little sip. "Thank you." He doesn't mean just for the coffee, either, and when Adam puts out a hand, covers Brad's and gives it a squeeze, Brad knows he knows.

He's barely finished his coffee when Adam leans over, and Brad can feel warm breath on his lips and smell Adam's own coffee, a rich and spicy cinnamon scent, and then Adam _stops_ and Brad rolls his eyes in frustration.

"If this is what all your dates complain about, it's no wonder you don't get many," he comments. "Teasing isn't nice."

"I don't usually date," Adam murmurs. "Usually when I ask what I get is 'fuck me first' and then they walk."

"Are you that bad in bed?" Brad raises an eyebrow. Adam's grin is rueful.

"I don't think so? I mean, nobody's ever said I am. I've had a couple of guys come back. But most of the guys I've met . . . aren't really into dating, I guess." He shrugs a single shoulder, and even in the tight shirt it makes him look even younger than Brad. "I don't regret moving here, but most people seem to be in it for the game, not for anything real."

"Oh my god," Brad spits out, and when Adam's face falls and he tries to draw back Brad lays a hand on the back of his neck. "Not that way. I mean you sound like me." He lets out a bubbly little laugh that actually startles him, it's so different from the one he's dreamed up for work. "My fate was written in Mercury retrograde. I can't even believe this." 

Adam blinks at him. "Mercury what?"

"Retrograde. It's a conjunction between—" Brad glances at Adam's face, sees he's not getting through, and waves a hand. "Never mind. Anyway it makes electronics go crazy and I'm totally sure that's why my battery went bad even though I never had trouble with it before. It's all about connections, and screwing up communications and—"

And he is _totally_ not okay with being interrupted, but the lips on his are soft and taste like lip balm and _oh . . ._

And then Adam is staring anxiously at him from only a couple of inches away, close enough that Brad couldn't actually slap him if he wanted to, and after staring back for a couple of seconds Brad feels his face soften into a smile. 

"Okay," he murmurs. "That was effective." And he sits with his heart trying to race out of his chest, trying to look like that brush of lips on lips wasn't the first time he's been kissed sober by someone who looks more and more like something better than a fumbled attempt at a one-night stand. Adam, damn him, sits with his own happy smile on his face, looking as cool as a pool in January, happy to watch Brad smile. Brad's about to say something he'll probably regret, a nice snark to hide behind while he turns to sip his coffee, and before he can do more than get his mouth open Adam brushes the side of Brad's face with his fingers, a gentle, wondering touch nothing like the hungry gropes Brad gets at work. 

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Laundry," Brad answers, and Adam chuckles, low and deep in his throat. A matching shiver runs down Brad's spine. "Why?"

"Because I like you, but this after-work stuff is already getting old," Adam tells him. "We should go out to dinner."

Brad raises both eyebrows and laughs—he can't help it. "Dinner?"

"And a movie," Adam amends. "If anything good's playing."

Brad stares at Adam's lips, so close he can still feel Adam's breath. "Take me home. You're leaving me less than twenty-four hours to pick clothes."

Adam lets out a nervous little laugh, like he thinks Brad might be ditching him, and Brad manages to flail without actually moving a whole lot. "I'm serious, I have to shower and sleep and after that there isn't going to be a whole lot of time to freak out and get dressed, and I still have to pick up my car and go to the laundromat."

"Why freak out?"

"I did point out I've never actually been on a real date before, right?" Brad stares at him. He's pretty sure Adam is smarter than this. Adam stares at him.

"Never—I didn't think you were serious," Adam manages. Brad feels the edge of his lips quirk.

"I didn't either, when you told me," he says, and Adam folds him into another hug, lips against the cup of Brad's ear, and Brad feels his heart speed up entirely without his consent.

"Don't freak out," Adam counsels, below the heavy thump of the bass from downstairs. "Save the freakout for someone worth freaking out over."

"I think I'll use it on you, then, thanks," Brad counters, and runs a hand down Adam's back. Adam snuggles into the touch in a way that makes Brad think he wasn't aware he was going to do it until he did. His smile still looks unsure, but he holds out a hand to help Brad up.

"Let's get out of here, then," Adam suggests, and as Brad stands up he presses himself against Adam's side, snuggles neatly into the spaces there and reaches for Adam's hand. 

He's never held hands with someone, either, and he realises as Adam opens his car door that he's really been going about this whole thing backward. 

He expects Adam to just let him off outside his apartment building, but instead Adam parks the car, fishes in his pockets for a quarter for the parking meter—Brad watches him pop it in, watches the meter swing up to fifteen minutes and wants to squeal over how very much he likes that Adam doesn't just assume. Adam holds out his arm like they're in _Gone With the Wind_ , or something, and Brad would argue except it's kind of adorable, and so he tucks his arm under Adam's and keys them in and doesn't try to apologise for the musty smell and bad lighting in the hallway. 

Brad sticks his key in the lock. It still feels tight, and he's always glad it doesn't rattle around all loosey-lazy like it's been jimmied. He glances up, to his right.

"It's kind of a disaster, but you can come in if you want." Suddenly part of him kind of wants to point out his jar of quarters for laundry and parking, offer Adam the change to bring him up to two hours, and never mind this being their second meeting, not exactly a date. He'd be okay with knowing what Adam's kisses feel like on bare skin.

He's barely thought it when Adam offers him a rueful grin, and Brad thinks about what Adam said at their little table in the coffee club— _usually when I ask what I get is 'fuck me first' and then they walk_ —and winces inwardly at himself. He's sure Adam read the thought on his face. 

"Maybe I better go."

"When will you pick me up?"

Adam looks suddenly startled, and Brad realises that flirting or no, Adam still actually expected Brad to stand him up tomorrow. 

"I dunno . . . seven?"

"Seven's good," Brad tells him, and leans up to hug him, hoping he'll get another kiss out of it; one brief press of lips across a table and he's already hooked. 

He does, and Adam's kisses are nowhere near as shy as his semi-fumbly flirting attempts—his lips part and Brad can taste the last of the cinnamon on them before Adam nips gently at Brad's mouth, catches his lower lip and runs his tongue over soft, newly-exposed skin, and when Brad's mouth falls open in surprise—he's made out before, sure, but never with this kind of slow-motion intensity, and holy shit, _this_ is why stupid romantic comedies always end with this shot—Adam takes advantage of the moment, licking Brad's lips like a sweet dessert before moving onto his teeth and then the hard little ridge behind them, and finally Brad wraps his arms around Adam's neck and holds on before he can hit the floor. Somewhere behind them a door opens, and closes, and Brad hears a very old, shrill voice yelling—probably at him, probably at _them_ , half the people in this building are young starving artists and the other half are old starving pensioners and the latter hate the former with a kind of burning passion because of how much they tend to disregard the rules—and he's about to pull away and slink through his door when everything clarifies: the feel of his shirt bunched up in the small of his back where Adam is holding him steady, the warm body in front of him and the delicious mouth suggesting he deserves better than slinking out of sight—and he nonchalantly flips the bird behind Adam's back and ignores the enraged screech that follows, running his hand up through Adam's hair and oh _god_ it's just as thick and silky as it looks, plumped up with product but not crunchy and when he finally pulls away he's gasping.

"Okay," he finally manages. "Okay. Subtlety isn't my strong point, so if you want to do that again, you had damned well better put more money in your meter and we can go out to breakfast instead of dinner. And then maybe dinner too. Although if we do that I can't promise I'm going to let you go home tomorrow night either."

Adam lets out a chuckle that's less disbelieving than happy, finally without the vague note of something Brad thinks has festered way too long to be "just poking fun at himself" anymore. He smiles again, ducks his head and murmurs into Brad's ear.

"Maybe tomorrow, but tonight I . . . " This time the laugh is embarrassed, but not too much so—enough, Brad thinks, that he could smooth it away with more of those sweet, sweet kisses. "I think maybe I need a little freakout time too."

"But the good kind of freakout," Brad supplies. "Not the 'oh my god, why the fuck did I' sobbing helplessly freakout."

"Right," Adam agrees. "I might see if I can find somewhere to sing for awhile. It's a good way to freak out."

"You sing?" Brad raises an eyebrow. This he has to hear, and hopefully it'll be the kind of singing where he only has to lie a little bit about how good it is.

"Yeah, but my last real job was in _Hair_ ," Adam says. "I mean, I've had a couple of pay-for-play gigs where you get tips, but—"

"Wait, you mean you _actually sing_ ," Brad interjects. "I mean, you sing like—you're a professional?"

"Yeah. Barista's just something I'm doing to pay the bills. Just like every other starving artist in this town."

"So, I'm going to have to hear that sometime, just so you know."

"Okay," Adam agrees, and then he bends down again, plants a kiss at the corner of Brad's mouth—just lips, no tongue, no tease, a gentle goodnight. "Sleep well."

"You too." Brad thinks about turning his head and finishing what Adam started, but if he does, Adam's almost definitely going to get a ticket. "Tomorrow, seven. I'll be waiting for you. There's a buzzer on the door. I'm number twenty-one."

Adam offers him that megawatt smile again and heads off down the hall. Brad turns his key, lets himself in, leans against the door.

He should shower; he has the fingermarks of other men all over him, and it's usually the first thing he does when he gets home, washes those marks and touches down the drain in a soapy swirl, makes himself clean again.

But tonight, he thinks, as he touches his cheek, his lips, his waist, in some magic way Adam has already made him clean—whisked away the marks of sleaze and desperation and replaced them with clean, sparkly tingles and Brad should really cut this out because he's starting to sound, not just like a girl, but one of those annoying girls who always went "Huh? Oh, hee hee, I dunno" when she got called on in high school because she was too busy writing "Sally + James" all over her notebook.

He crosses his little blue room and looks out the window just in time to see Adam unlocking his car, and blows down a kiss Adam almost certainly won't see. Oh, he's being girly, all right—and frankly, he doesn't give a damn. He stares across his hovely little room and finally lets out the squeal that's been building all night in his chest on-and-off, bounds across to the bed and scoops a pillow into his arms to squeeze. When he falls asleep twenty minutes later, he still hasn't bothered to shower.

Some touches he's not ready to wash away.


End file.
